Monday, February 26, 2018

January is a good time of year to mark a new start, which typically means many new logos are launched. This year this included a bunch of media brands such as The Guardian, Slate, This American Life and a bunch of French TV channels. On more internal note, we found out what the super agency created by a merging a bunch of WPP-owned design agencies was to be called.

Friday, February 16, 2018

A lock back a contemporary redesign from a few years ago today. Bros is a chocolate bar brand owned by Nestlé. Bros is Dutch for "brittle" and the main feature of Bros chocolate is that includes air bubbles, similar to Nestlé Aero chocolate sold in many other countries. Back in 2015, it launched fresh new look, created by Millford.

To counter declining sales it was decided that Bros would more clearly target women aged 25-45. The new packaging and its logo are more "feminine and enthusiastic".

Monday, February 5, 2018

France Télévisions is France's public TV broadcaster, operating the domestic channels France 2 through 5 as well as the overseas services "Outre-Mer 1ère", their "satellite" channel France Ô and other services, including news channel France Info. Last week, on January 29, the channels launched new logos based on a common template. The new visual identity system was designed by Paris-based creative studio Movement, who branded the group news channel France Info back in 2016, with .

The old logo system, created by Gédéon, was introduced in 2002 when France Télévisions consisted of three channels (France 2, 3 and 5). It was meritoriously expanded when new channels were launched, but has been bursting at the seams in recent years.

The new channel logos feel less rigid and "logo-like", consisting in their pure forms of a dot and a numeral, supplemented by the word "France" when needed. The identifying colours for the individual channels have been largely been maintained and "brightened". On screen, the channels are also identified by different animated patterns, such as concentric circles for France 2, rectangles for France 3, irregularly placed circles for France 4, gridded circles for France Ô/La 1ère and rasterized images for the corporate level.

Thursday, January 25, 2018

Qualcomm owns technology that is used in virtually every smartphone on the market today, and has therefore grown hugely influential. A little bit too influential according to some. During the Consumer Electronic Show earlier this month it rolled out a refreshed logo, either without fanfare or overshadowed by other CES news.

The update is fairly straight-forward, switching some letters to lowercase, resolving some weird spacing issues, making everything more legible, but keeping the double-M ligature. The Q in the old logo with its off-center straight tail was so distinctive that a version of it had been incorporated into the corporate typeface. The new version looses that distinctiveness with a more generic Q.

The previous logo had been used for a very long time, but wasn't used for some key products. Notably, the flagship Snapdragon processor's didn't use the corporate logo, instead opting for a generic typeface. The new logo is more versatile and the Snapdragon logo has been updated to include it.

Monday, January 22, 2018

PressReader is a service that provides newspapers and magazines from around the world in electronic form to libraries and their patrons as well as hotels, airlines and other organizations who want to subscribe to a variety of news sources. It cooperates and provides monetization for over 7,000 publishers and makes their content available online and trough apps. It has a refreshed brand identity, developed internally by PressReader Creative Lab.

The main icon is a combination of an app icon, a speech bubble and the letter P, with a slight gradient shadow to give it depth. According to the guidelines, PressReader's branding should convey a company that is "youthful, modern , intelligent, forward-thinking and a little bit cheeky".

Friday, January 19, 2018

One of the first rebrands announced this year was the Make-A-Wish Foundation refreshing its wordmark (see more at Brand New). The previous one was introduced as one of the first rebrands of the millennium in the year 2000, and is an interesting case study in itself.

Prior to the year 2000, the Make-a-Wish Foundation didn't really have a coherent identity and its brand recognition suffered from copycats. The logo for the central organisation was a photorealistic image of a wishbone. Back then the wishbone symbol suffered from low awareness, today it feels baffling in its anatomical weirdness. It also didn't work across cultures and was hard to use in layouts.

A new more ownable identity was designed by Luxon Carrà under Patricia Houden's leadership. The clever integration of shooting star with a clear wordmark was said to represent "hope, compassion and integrity". The execution was of its time with a heavy typeface and charcoal effect. It launched on January 27, 2000.